The Plight of the American Chestnut

03/08/17 by Guest Writer

Catawba students inspect American Chestnut trees in Frog Hollow Orchard.

Catawba College students in Dr. Jay Bolin’s resource ecology and
management class took a field trip recently to Frog Hollow Orchard, just
outside of Salisbury, to learn about the conservation efforts of The American
Chestnut Foundation (TACF) on the plight of the American Chestnut tree.

The American Chestnut tree is one of America’s most historic trees,
as it used to make up one in every five trees in the Appalachian mountain
range. These trees became popular during the turn of the 20th Century in America
as they grew fast, straight and tall and were rot-resistant.

The regional science coordinator for TACF, Ed Schwartzman, has been
working at Frog Hollow Orchard with the backing of the LandTrust for Central
North Carolina and Catawba College. “The American chestnut is an American
legacy because of its variety of uses as a food crop and a timber tree,” he
said. “It was very important for wildlife and provided abundant mast [fruit/nuts of trees] every
year.”

Catawba students inspect American Chestnut trees in Frog Hollow Orchard.

The problems with the tree began with the introduction of the Chinese
Chestnut tree in 1904. The introduction of the Chinese Chestnut brought the
introduction of a blight called Cryphonectria
parasiticato the American Chestnut trees. Most Chinese Chestnut trees are
immune to the blight that it brought over, but since the American Chestnut had
never been exposed to it before, it was labeled functionally extinct by the
1950s. This is because the blight causes the tree to get cankers or sores on
its bark until the tree dies.

Bolin noted that “as
a botanist in the mountains of North Carolina, I frequently encounter stump
sprouts of American Chestnut
and occasionally trees with active chestnut blight cankers, and it's just
amazing to consider the completely different structure of many of our forests
with the [potential] reintroduction of this important tree.”

The ACF is currently working on the rehabilitation of the American
Chestnut tree with chapters in each state where American Chestnuts used to run
rampant. “Restoration of the
American Chestnut to our forests will be a conservation achievement of historic
proportions,” Schwartzman said.

They use cross-breeding techniques with Chinese Chestnut trees in the
hope that the gene which gives the Chinese Chestnut some blight resistance will
cross over into the American Chestnut genes. After these trees are cross-bred,
they are placed into breeding orchards and seed orchards for experimentation.
During this experiment phase Schwartzman says, “All
trees are inoculated with blight to see which ones survive, and then [we] carry
them forward in the breeding program,” and the process starts all over again
with special attention paid to the trees that did survive. This kind of
experimentation is called a progeny test.

The job of the Catawba students on this trip was to analyze the 625
trees planted two years ago in Frog Hollow Orchard to determine survival. Each
student pairing was responsible for two of the 25 plots. “I am excited to have
our students engaged in this this project, and to know that we are on the cusp
of restoring this tree to its historic role in the ecology of our eastern
forests is gratifying,” Bolin said.

“But the chestnut blight isn’t the only problem we have here,”
Schwartzman told students before they began their work. Most of the trees were
also susceptible to Pytophthora cinnamomi,
or root rot, and the field was also full of weeds, which could have caused
issues for some of the trees’ growth.

For the ACF and for many botanists like Bolin, saving the American
Chestnut is more than just bringing back an old tree; it would be the revival
of a historic American staple.